mobile device detection

Have you ever wondered how the model and characteristics of your phone, TV, or computer are being analyzed and used? Well that’s device detection! It allows a website to create a page that’s optimized for a device model, browser, and operating system. Using device detection, websites can ensure a great user experience and improve performance.

User-agent strings

Device detection analyzes the user agent (UA) string sent by the browser. UAs help identify what device is currently accessing the site. This can include browsers that are running email applications, app web views, operating systems and, most importantly, the device itself. UA strings are designated in the HTTP standard, which says that a UA is made up of multiple product tokens indicating the software and hardware characteristics of the device. Unfortunately, the rules involved in creating UAs aren’t strict. Browser makers and hardware manufacturers, who are responsible for naming the hardware in the UA, are free to format information about the device or the browser as they see fit. And with all the variations of devices, the task of accurately detecting devices is complicated and time consuming enough that simple hacks fail to do the job.

Our solution

A device detection solution must be sophisticated enough correctly interpret UAs, avoid false positives, and stay current with the ever-growing array of device models. ScientiaMobile holds a patent on its WURFL device detection API (application programming interface). By using this API to analyze the UAs from your website, we can provide device intelligence that let’s you optimize your browsing experience.

According to a recent Google study, more than half of mobile visitors will leave if the website takes longer than three seconds to load. And one in two mobile visitors expect their page to load in less than two seconds. This is especially important to the e-commerce and advertising community who rely on image-heavy content to drive many of their conversions and sales. In fact,mobile sites which load in only five seconds earned almost twiceas much mobile revenue compared to ads which had site load in 19 seconds.